The light was so dim only the bare outlines of the recumbent figure were visible, and, following the first shock of discovery, my earliest thought was to spare the girl.
"Wait where you are, Rene!" I exclaimed, waving her back.

"There is a man lying here beyond the log.

Come, Sam; we will see what he looks like." He was slow in following, hanging back as I approached closer to the motionless form, and I could hear the muttering of his lips.
Unquestionably the man was dead; of this I was assured before I even knelt beside him.

He lay prone on his face in a litter of dead leaves, and almost the first thing I noticed was the death wound back of his ear, where a large caliber bullet had pierced the brain.

His exposed hands proved him a negro, and it was with a feeling of unusual repugnance that I touched his body, turning it over sufficiently to see the face.